


It’s Magic

by Frumpologist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus transformation, Beltane, Dirty Talk, F/M, Fluff, Magic, Multi, Public Sex, Sex in the forest, Smut, Time Travel, Triad - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 14:24:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frumpologist/pseuds/Frumpologist
Summary: The magic of Beltane brings Hermione face to face with two marauders who can help her discover her Animagus form.





	It’s Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [articcat621](https://archiveofourown.org/users/articcat621/gifts).



> This story was written for the Hermione’s Haven Bunny Bounce Exhange 2019. 
> 
> Lovely Articcat621: I hope you enjoy this piece and thank you for such a fun prompt! I hope I’ve done it justice <3 
> 
> Disclaimer: All familiar content does not belong to me. Harry Potter and all its content belongs to JK Rowling.

“I saw something just over here.” 

“You can’t just chase after flashes of light, Prongs.” Sirius chased after James through the Forest of Dean, out of breath and out of patience. “We’re in the middle of a war, in case you’ve forgotten.” 

“Of course I haven’t forgotten, Padfoot. It’s just—” James stopped so quickly that Sirius crashed right into his back. They both nearly toppled over, but somehow managed to maintain enough footing to stay upright. “Do you see that?” 

“What is it?” Sirius stepped around James and pushed his long, dark hair from his face. 

“It—it has to be female; it’s wearing a dress.” James followed Sirius and watched the little figure on the ground for movement. “Though, you also wore—”

“We said we’d never talk about that night again.” Sirius nudged him in the ribs. “Besides, she’s obviously part yeti with that mane of hair around her shoulders.” 

“I think she’d have more hair over her entire body, Pads.” James pushed Sirius forward with his shoulder. “Her legs look bare.” 

“Clearly someone taught her how to use a razor.” Sirius stepped forward lightly and James clung to his steps. “With hair like that, there’s no way she’s not some sort of creature.” 

“I quite like it, actually,” James whispered and finally made his way around Sirius and his slow, careful steps. 

Up close, she looked to be about their age. Her eyelashes laid softly against the skin just at the top of her pink cheeks. The perfect bow of her lips colored scarlet like the dress she wore wrapped snugly around her body. Perfectly at peace, and yet somehow James’ concern only grew. She was too still, breathing too shallow, too alone in such dark times. 

“Is she a Muggle?” Sirius asked quietly as he crouched down next to James. 

“I don’t know, do I?” James rolled his eyes and reached out to touch her cheek with the pads of his fingers. “I don’t see a wand anywhere and she looks, I don’t know, normal enough.” 

“Bar the hair,” Sirius added. “Maybe we should apparate her to St. Mungo’s. She could be dying.” 

“She’s breathing and warm,” James argued with a shake of his head. “I think she must have just… fallen asleep out here.” 

“Explain the flash of light, then.” Sirius grabbed James’ wrist and pulled his hand away from the girl’s face. “You really need to stop touching things without considering where they’ve been.” 

“Padfoot, it’s an unconscious girl in the middle of the Forest of Dean. Not some treacle tart in the middle of a pub.” 

“Bet she tastes sweet like treacle, though.” Sirius’ eyebrows rose high on his head, a playful smirk lifted his lips. 

“Can you think of nothing other than chasing tail?” James sighed and yanked his hand away from his best mate. “Honestly, you’ll sleep with anything that has legs.”

Sirius shrugged. “You say things like this as if they’re bad things and I really don’t think you understand just how insufferably Moony you sound sometimes.” 

“We could all stand to be a little bit more like Moony sometimes, Padfoot.”

The girl moved and James jumped back, collided with Sirius, and sent them both crashing onto their backs. They scrambled in sync, hands grabbing at the dewy blades of grass of the forest floor, seeking purchase. 

“What—what happened?” The girl blinked and brought a hand to her head. “Is this— am I in the Forest of Dean?”

“Did you come from the Forest of Dean?” James asked, because really, how could she not know where she was unless she was doing something stupid like traveling through time or apparating drunk? 

“Yes,” she whispered, closing her eyes tightly as she forced herself into a sitting position. She drew her knees up against her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“Er—“ Sirius glanced at James, back to the mystery girl, and then stared pointedly at the ground. “Knickers.”

The girl gasped and flattened her legs to the ground. A delicious blush that matched her dress crept onto her cheeks. James bit back a smile. 

“You’re in the Forest of Dean.” James stood and approached her slowly. He held out his hand with Sirius at his back and offered to help her up. “Was that flash of light from you?”

The girl raised one winged brow and hoisted herself up with his help. “Flash of light? No, I’d don’t remember a flash of light. Excuse me, but—”

She patted down her person and dug through what appeared to be hidden pockets within her dress. James found himself with a face full of wand. The bright tip made him squint just as the strange girl —clearly a witch— gasped. 

“James Potter?” The tip of her wand flicked the side and her voice rose an octave. “Sirius!”

“Er—“ James lifted a hand to the back of his neck and massaged it roughly as he watched her wide eyes flit between their shocked faces. “Not to sound like a complete arse, but—”

“Who the bloody hell are you?” Sirius, with all the grace of a brick to the face, saved him the trouble of sounding like an arse. “What are you doing in the middle of a forest in a sexy little dress while there’s a war going on?”

“Oh Merlin,” she breathed as her hand rose to her lips. She spoke through them softly. “Is it still Beltane? The First of May?”

James glanced sideways to Sirius. That’s precisely why they’d been out in the forest themselves. A full moon, Beltane; it was Moony’s hardest night of the year. He wouldn’t even roam about with them, said the magic drove the wolf mad. Far less dangerous, but no less riled up, James and Sirius still wanted to experience the magic of the holiday.

“It is.” Sirius gave a firm nod and crossed his arms over his chest. He eyed her skeptically, a single brow raised. “Is that somehow important? Are you a creature? Should you be locked up?”

His eyes flicked up to the moonlight where it filtered through the canopy of leaves and back down to the girl in question. James felt Sirius move and watched him withdraw his wand from within his pocket.

“I’m not,” she assured them, her words firm and breathy all at once. “I was in the forest trying—trying to—”

She plucked a small, silvery vial from between her breasts. The action drew James’ attention and he couldn’t help but focus there for a moment too long. He followed the flush on her chest all the way up to her cheeks and shrugged when she pursed her lips.

“Is that an Animagus Potion?” Sirius stepped forward and leveled a look at the tiny vial. “You’re attempting transformation tonight?”

“Clever.” James smiled at her, a small quirks of his lips encased in helpless dimples. “Using the magic of Beltane to make it easier. Wish we’d thought of that.”

She beamed at him and swiped the vial away from Sirius before he could take it from her fingers. “That doesn’t fill me with much hope. Three teenagers figured out how to transform and I’ve been working on this for two years and haven’t managed it yet.” 

“Aw, love,” Sirius cooed, flicking a thick lock of curly hair over her shoulder. “If you’ve managed to get the potion this color, you’re closer than you think.” He turned to James with a devilish smirk. “Remember how long it took Pete to hold that Mandrake leaf in his mouth? I thought he’d never make the change.”

James laughed, “And it took us ages to figure out that sunlight affected the brew. Horrible results from that.”

Sirius shuddered dramatically and shook his head. “McGonagall almost gave me a lashing for that. Four months of detention for turning a frightening shade of chartreuse for a day.”

The girl in the red dress—whose name was still a mystery just as much as her presence in war-torn wizarding England—chuckled at Sirius. But it wasn’t the sound that drew James’ attention, no. It was the familiarity that shined out of her eyes. Almost as if she knew Sirius to be the type of wizard who would earn the wrath of McGonagall. And that brought with it a whole new arsenal of questions. 

“You know McGonagall?” He asked her with wide eyes and a raised brow. “Are you a current Hogwarts student?”

She startled and stared at him with large, brown eyes. “Er, no,” she said slowly as her hands fidgeted with the vial between her fingers, “I haven’t been a student in a couple of—years.”

Sirius’ brows shot up. “That can’t be right. I would have remembered you. What’d you say your name was?” 

The girl took a moment to think and pulled the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth before releasing it. 

“Hermione Granger. Class of 1998.”

“Nineteen ninety—” It ripped from James’ mouth before he could stop it, incredulity dripping from the words. “Bollocks. You can’t be from—can you?”

“James.” 

But James ignored Sirius and continued. “There’s no such thing as time travel. It’s a myth. So, who are you really?” 

“James,” Sirius hissed with a clenched jaw. 

James shrugged him off and stepped closer to the girl, the space between them so short he could smell the bitterness of the Mandrake leaf on her, could smell the earth on her skin from lying on the ground. He could see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes and heard the shallow breath she released as she glanced to her feet and refused to look him in the eyes. 

He took her chin in between his finger and thumb but she yanked away from him with a scowl. There was fire behind her eyes, the same fire that the graduating class of 1978 held from pressures of the rise of Lord Voldemort. James didn’t try to capture her chin again, but his lips dipped. If what she said was true and she held that sort of ferocity within her, just below the surface, what did that say of the world twenty years in the future?

“You’re being an arse, Prongs.” Sirius stepped closer to James’ side and latched onto his shoulder so that James couldn’t shrug him off. “All the weird shit we’ve seen and you don’t believe that twenty years from now the Ministry has figured out some way to travel through time?” 

“Actually,” Hermione interrupted, tentatively placing her palm on James’ chest as if she meant to calm his worries. “I didn’t travel here with a time turner. They’re volatile.” 

“Then how—” James began, but was cut off by Sirius. 

“Obviously it’s Beltane.” Sirius glanced to Hermione, who nodded. “She’s trying to transform into an animagus, Prongs. Who better to teach her than the best?”

“That’s not—Padfoot, it doesn’t work that way. She can’t just  _ will _ herself through time!” 

“Of course she didn’t just will herself here, but clearly there is the magic of Beltane at play and—”

“A holiday can’t just make people appear in a different time!” 

“It’s  _ magic _ . Of course it can!” 

They stood toe to toe, girl forgotten at their side, arguing about the ins and outs of magical holidays and what was and wasn’t possible. It wasn’t until a faint whisper infiltrated their quiet, heated discussion that James and Sirius finally broke apart and noticed Hermione was no longer at their sides. Instead, she was standing a few short steps away with the vial of Animagus Potion extended in her palm and her wand outstretched in her other hand. 

“Amato Amino Animato Animagus,” she whispered with a concentrated glare at the vial in her hand. Her brow formed a notch over her nose and a breath left her in a huff when the spell had no effect. She tried again and nothing happened. 

“The inflection is wrong,” James pointed out, invading her space yet again. “It’s Am- _ ah _ -to, not  _ Ahm- _ ato.”

He saddled up in front of her and wrapped his hand around her wrist. James manipulated the way she was holding her wand and smiled at the strange look on her face. The look that said she wasn’t used to being corrected, that she was wary of bending to his instruction, and didn’t trust that he’d be able to perform this magic any better than she could. 

Oh, but she didn’t know. Hermione Granger from 1998 had no idea the lengths he’d gone to become an Animagus. He held her tighter around the wrist and pressed his lips together when their eyes met. 

“It’s a simple flick, but your wrist can’t be floppy,” he instructed her. “One fluid motion, firm and direct.”

Sirius stood close again and he grabbed the hand holding the vial. He pulled it forward so that it sat in direct moonlight that filtered through the treetops. His long fingers closed slightly over her palm and he rearranged the vial so that it was upright rather than on its side. 

“The moonlight is an essential part of the magic,” he said. “If you want to ensure you transform tonight, you have to take every allowance that fate gives you, and you’re lucky that tonight it’s providing you a cloudless, full moon sky.” 

“It doesn’t say any of this in the textbooks,” Hermione whispered, her unease apparent in the downturn of her lips. 

“We took a very long time to perfect it,” James breathed back quietly, a small smile appearing on his face. “Trust us. We know what we’re doing.” 

“You know the one thing we didn’t get to try…” Sirius suggested, a sly smirk lifting his lips. James tried to shake his head no, no they weren’t going to be doing any of  _ that _ now, but it didn’t deter his best mate at all. “Beltane magic is said to be most potent when there’s passion involved.” 

“I am passionate,” Hermione responded quickly on a breath. 

“He doesn’t mean—” James sighed and ran his hand from her wrist to her elbow to straighten it out. He felt her back straighten against him and watched the skin of her arm break out in tiny goosepimples. James’ eyes snapped to Sirius to see if he noticed the same reaction. Sirius’ eyes darkened. “He means sex.”

“How would that possibly help?” Her eyes darted between them. “That’s not in any book I’ve read. The books I’ve read specifically stated that Beltane is—”

“Sex magic is a powerful conduit for transformations.” Sirius trailed the pads of his fingers down the side of her arm. “Even James and I cheated the system and—”

“Oi! We swore we’d never—” James gasped. 

“Prongs. It happened. You liked it.” Sirius’ hand moved from her arm to her waist and he stepped closer so that she was caged between their bodies. “Besides, look at how quickly our transformation happened afterwards. Peter took ages. It’s simple maths.” 

“You two—?” She turned from one set of darkening eyes to the other. “And it… helped?” 

Sirius nodded, his thumb rubbing circles at her hip. James noticed that he was slowly inching the skirt of her dress up and up and she barely noticed. He was quickly losing his own self-control, hearing her shallow breathing and watching the apples of her cheeks blush under their attention. He liked it, and Merlin help him, he was already growing hard at the idea of it.

“Okay.” It was barely a breath, but that’s all it took. 

James’s fingers reached deftly for the zip at the back of her dress. He allowed his fingers to trail along the silky skin at her neck, moving her curls out of the way and over her shoulder. Sirius dipped forward, his lips captured hers and the small gasp that left her hardened James further.

The sound of the zip was so loud in such a quiet forest. Just the sound of their kiss and her dress falling to the ground at their feet could be heard amongst the nightlife that chirped around them. Sirius growled and Hermione’s body stumbled back into James. He heard rustling and glanced to find Sirius’ shirt flung behind them. Not wanting to be left overdressed, James ripped his own shirt off. 

Hermione’s wand fell, the vial with it, to the grass at their feet. Her hands raised and James took the opportunity to let his hands wander her body. He stroked the skin of her hips and hooked his thumbs into the band of her knickers. Tugging them down her body, he encouraged her to step out of them as they fell to the ground. He kissed his way back up her body, starting from the back of her calf, the soft flesh behind her knee, and finally over the curve of her arse. He bit into it gently and chuckled against her skin when she jumped. 

“You’re soaking,” Sirius said gruffly. “Do you like being naked out in the open like this? Can you feel the natural world around you?” 

Hermione made a noise, a breathy little sigh that went straight to James’ cock. When he stood straight again, his hands wrapped around to her breasts and he pulled the cups of her bra down so that her breasts were bare before them. Sirius immediately started to feast on them, making noises as sucked on her nipples and drew soft moans from her. 

“You like his mouth on you, love?” James asked quietly in her ear. She nodded and he nipped at her lobe. “You should feel it when he has it on your pretty little cunt. Would you like that? Sirius’ tongue diving into your pussy?” 

James reached down and ran a finger through her folds. She was so wet and jerked against his finger as if to ask him for more. It made him grind into her, his cock sliding against the cleft of her arse. He slipped his finger inside of her, hand held at an awkward angle, but he didn’t care. He only wanted to keep hearing those noises fall from her lips. 

“Ride his fingers, Hermione,” Sirius whispered and she obeyed. Her hips moving in short movements over his hand. “I don’t want to wait. Are you ready, love?”

She moved faster and James curled a finger inside of her. His thumb pressed firmly against her clit. 

“Hike your leg here,” Sirius directed her, lifting her leg around his hip. 

James removed his hand from her sex.

“Have you ever been taken here?” He asked her, his fingers running from the base of her back over the cheek of her arse. 

“N-no.” Her head fell back against his shoulder. Perhaps not tonight, then. 

James was rock hard and ready. He waited while Sirius situated her as he needed. The sound of his groan, the way his head rested in the crook of her neck, sent James mad. He needed to be inside of her, wanted to have his cock buried within her, but he’d bide his time. 

As Sirius surged forward and she gasped, James cupped his hand on her breasts and ran his thumbs over her peaked nipples. His fingernail scratched lightly at the sensitive flesh and Hermione bucked forward. James followed her with his hips, using her arse as the friction he needed. His lips attached to the muscle between her neck and her shoulder and he bit down. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” Sirius groaned, his snapping hips picking up their pace. 

Hermione cried out and for every forward motion that Sirius made into her cunt. Her hips moved back and into James’ cock. He palmed her breasts, squeezing them and tugging at her nipples. 

“Help her, Prongs,” Sirius gritted out. 

His mouth dropped down and he took one of her nipples into his mouth and James dropped his hands down to her hips. He lifted her and then slammed her down onto Sirius’s erection and the noise that ripped itself from Sirius’ throat encouraged James further.

“Merlin, yes, just like that,” he groaned with her breast still in her mouth. It was muffled, but damn was it hot.

Pre come leaked from James’ cock. He thrust against Hermione as he lifted her body again and pushed her back down. Harder and faster, he picked up pace as his climax began to grow. She panted and jerked her hips even as James sped up fucking her on Sirius.

“Oh, god, yes. Don’t stop—please, don’t stop,” she begged. “I’m going to—”

Sirius’ hand reached up and tangled in her hair. Her head tilted back and James licked a line up the side of her neck. Sirius swore a string of curses against her throat. She cried out and her body fell limp between them. James thrust against her arse twice more and climaxed with his own groan against her shoulder. 

“You are bloody amazing,” James muttered against her skin, just over top a reddening bruise he’d left just moments before. 

“Never done that before.” Sirius dropped a light kiss on her lips and pulled back. His eyes found James. “You’re kinky, mate. Didn’t know you had it in you.” 

“You’ve had it in you before, Pads. Don’t get shy on me now.” James smirked at him as they extricated themselves from one another. “Hermione?” 

She wobbled as her feet hit the ground and James and Sirius each steadied her with their hands on her elbows. 

“I, er—that was—” She was breathless and it made James a tad smug. He smoothed her hair away from her eyes, the curls growing exponentially from the perspiration on her skin. “I can’t believe that just happened.” 

“Hermione, you need to try the spell.” James reminded her, though his brain was blissed out. He ducked down and plucked her wand and the vial of potion from the ground and shoved it into her hands. “While you’re recovering and the magic is at its strongest.”

Hermione bit her lip and glanced to Sirius. 

“Go on, love,” he encouraged her. “Try it. Nice and firm movements, that’s right.” 

Hermione held the vial out toward the moonlight and held her wand precisely how James had shown her earlier. She jabbed the wand forward and flicked. 

“Amato Amino Animato Animagus,” she whispered, enunciating as James had instructed her.

There was a flash of light, a quiet  _ poof _ of noise, and in Hermione’s place there was nothing but smoke. 

James whirled around, eyes wide on the place she’d been, and then swiveled to catch Sirius’ eye watching the same place she had stood. Her dress still laid on the bed of the forest, but there was no animal in sight. 

“Where is she?” James glanced around and Sirius joined in. 

“Maybe she’s small? Like an ant or a cricket.” Sirius, despite being naked as the day he was born, dropped onto his hands and knees, and began searching through the grass for Hermione as an insect. 

“Who the hell transforms into an ant?” James cried hysterically, but nonetheless, joined Sirius in searching for her. 

_ Who.  _

“Can you imagine how terrible it would be? Oh, Sirius, what’s your animal form that represents your personality?” Sirius mocked the entire magical system. “Oh, I’m a bloody insect!” 

“You know who could pass off as an insect?” James ran his hand through several blades of grass. “Your mental cousin. She’d probably be a moth. See the light and just—”

_ Who _ .

“Bella? No, mate. She’d be a, I don’t know, like a giant squid or something.” Sirius laughed. “Demon of the sea and all that.”

_ Who _ .

“Bugger off,” James hissed at the— “Hermione?” 

James canted his head up and saw a beautiful, eagle owl with large orange eyes hovering mid-air above them. It fluttered its wings and blinked down at them, and uttered another soft  _ who _ .

“Ho _ ly— _ ” Sirius issued a long breath between his lips. “Well, let’s not keep her waiting, Prongsie.”

“Right you are, Pads!” 

And, as if having sex in the middle of a forest during a war with a complete stranger was something entirely normal, the two best friends instantly transformed into their animal counterparts. A massive stag with a large rack of antlers stood tall next to a giant black, shaggy dog whose tongue lolled out the side of its mouth. The big eagle owl with ruffled feathers and enormous orange eyes swept down toward them and planted itself right on the highest antler on the stag.

The trio gallivanted around the Forest of Dean for hours and hours, in their own animalistic way, celebrating Beltane and causing a general ruckus amongst the native wildlife. James and Sirius played and chased the owl as it soared through the sky. The owl dive-bombed the floor-bound friends and wove in and around their bodies as it learned to use its wings. 

At the end of the night as the moon was lost to the sky and the sun began to rise, James found himself back in animal form, pressed firmly against Hermione’s back and Hermione stretched out against Sirius’ chest. 

Worrying about how long she’d stay was a problem for another day. Just then, as James’ hands roamed her body, he’d kiss the bruises his mouth left the night before and hope that perhaps, by some luck of fate, he’d at least be able to keep her in his life until the next Beltane holiday. If not forever. 

Magic had brought her into his life. James only hoped that magic would keep her there, too.


End file.
